captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead. >> pitts: i've got to tell you, the first time i read it, all 21 pages, i said, "that man is guilty." >> right. everything that is in that confession was fed to us by the police. >> pitts: why did you sign it? >> i thought i was going home. >> pitts: come on now. you had to know if you admitted to raping and killing a woman, you weren't going home to mama. >> i had no understanding of that, none. >> there were more juvenile false confessions in chicago than any place else in the united states. what's happening? it's not because the kids are different that makes them more vulnerable to confessing. it's because the way the police keep pounding and pounding away, you get innocent kids to confess to crimes they didn't commit. >> stahl: madagascar is a

paradise of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world, like wide-eyed lemurs, chameleons that sparkle with color, geckos that hide in plain sight, and more than 200 kinds of frogs. but we were searching for a rare creature that has roamed the earth for more than 200 million years. >> we found one. >> pelley: in "les miserables," hugh jackman plays one of the most heroic characters in literature, jean valjean. ♪ ♪ critics are already whispering oscar for the 44-year-old actor. jackman told us that everything he's done in a wide-ranging career, has led him to this one moment. >> i know that it demands everything for me as a singer, as an actor, to pull it off. it's the role of a lifetime.

>> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm leslie stahl. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm lara logan. >> i'm byron pitts. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on "60 minutes."

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got it. what? yeah, i got it, come here. nobody move, especially you, charlie. how'd you do that? automagically. let's eat. combine pictures with best face. on the new samsung note ii. for a limited time, get two flip covers for the price of one, exclusively at verizon. >> pitts: why would anyone confess to a crime they did not commit? it happens so often in chicago, defense attorneys call the city "the false confession capital of the united states." chicago has twice as many documented false confession cases as any city in the country.

one reason may be the way police go about questioning suspects, and "60 minutes" has learned the chicago police department is now the subject of a justice department investigation into its interrogation practices. two cases we examined involve several teenage boys who were arrested and, they say, forced or tricked into confessing to violent crimes they never committed. each spent nearly half their lives in prison. they are free now, and told us their story together for the first time. >> terrill swift: we all of us got one thing in common-- we did an extensive amount of time in jail for something we didn't do. and that's the bottom line. >> pitts: they each were sentenced to terms that ranged from 15 years to life. terrill swift, michael saunders, vincent thames, and harold richardson were convicted in one rape and murder; james harden, robert taylor and jonathan barr, in a different one. all were found guilty based solely on confessions. jonathan, you went in as a14- year-old boy. >> jonathan barr: yes, sir.

>> pitts: what'd you come out as? >> barr: came out as a 34-year- old man. >> michael saunders: yeah, we was young, little kids. >> james harden: i miss my mama, man. i miss my mom and daddy, man. i miss my mama. it seemed like some days, i can't function. >> pitts: she die while you were in prison? >> harden: yeah. >> pittstheir troubles began in 1991 when chicago was in the midst of a violent crime wave-- more than 900 homicides in 12 months. police were under enormous pressure to solve those crimes. terrill swift was 17, was still in high school, had never been in serious trouble, when another teenager from his neighborhood implicated him, vincent, michael and harold in the rape and murder of a 30-year-old prostitute named nina glover. did anyone ask you "terrill swift, did you murder this woman?" >> swift: that was the first thing they said. whoa. "raped and beat who? nina, i don't know nina glover. can i get my mother in here so i can get a lawyer?"

and nothing. >> pitts: terrill voluntarily turned himself in to police and was placed in an interrogation room, surrounded by several detectives. the questioning, he said, lasted for over 12 hours. how close were they? show me, physically, how close were they? >> swift: like, right here. "you're going to die in jail. you're never going home." >> pitts: yelling at you? >> swift: yelling at me. >> pitts: were you scared? did you cry? >> swift: absolutely, i was crying, but no one listened. >> pitts: terrill wanted to go home, and says police told him if he admitted to the rape and murder, he could leave. so he signed a 21-page confession which gave specific details to how he and his co- defendants committed the crime. i got to tell you, the first time i read it, all 21 pages, i said, "that man is guilty." >> swift: right. everything that's in that confession was fed to us, myself and my co-defendants, by the police. >> pitts: did they force you to sign? >> swift: no. >> pitts: so why'd you sign it? >> swift: i thought i was going home.

>> pitts: you were 17 years old, so you weren't a child. >> swift: i guess i was still a mama's boy. >> pitts: come on now. you had to know if you admitted to raping and killing a woman, you weren't going home to mama. >> swift: i had no understanding of that, none. >> pitts: terrill swift would later recant, but it was too late-- at trial, a judge believed the confession and sentenced him to 30 years. >> robert taylor: that whole ordeal, it done something to every last one of us. and with me, it'd made me numb. >> pitts: in the other case, robert taylor, jonathan barr and james harden were arrested in high school for the rape and murder of their classmate 14- year-old catteresa mathews. they were taken into custody after a fellow student gave their names to police as possible suspects. robert was 15 when he says he was taken into an interrogation room and forced to sign a confession. >> taylor: man, you being cuffed up and beat on by the police. man, them people can get you to do what they want you to do. >> pitts: what did they make you do? >> taylor: made me sign it.

i mean, that... that murdered me. it killed me inside. >> pitts: his co-defendant, james harden, says he was told by police, if he signed the confession, he'd be released immediately. >> james harden: they had the statement already wrote up and the man say, "do you want to go home and sleep in your bed tonight?" so i said, "hell, yeah." so that's how easy it is for a person to sign their life away, just the thought... just being taken away from your parents and say, "okay, i want to go home and sleep in my bed tonight. hell, yeah, i fixing to sign it." >> pitts: but james never got home that night. he and the others were tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. >> bob milan: there's nothing worse as a prosecutor than playing a role in sending an innocent person or people to prison for many years. there's nothing worse. >> pitts: bob milan should know. as a young prosecutor, he worked this case, and would eventually rise to second-in-command in the cook county state's attorney's office.

now in private practice, he says publicly for the first time, he should have examined the confessions more closely. >> milan: i never believed anybody would confess to a horrible crime they didn't commit. i didn't believe it. i didn't believe people would confess to... to rape and murder of a woman. you know, just didn't believe it. but based on my experiences, i found it did happen. these young men lost a lot of good lives. i was part of it-- i didn't mean it, i never would have done that intentionally, but it doesn't make it any easier. >> pitts: yeah. haunts you, still, it sounds like. >> milan: sure. always will. >> pitts: why would a detective push for a false confession, you think? >> milan: what happens is it's tunnel vision, okay. they get locked in on this individual. so the anonymous phone call, the confidential informant, the well-meaning witness sends them in the wrong path. >> pitts: chicago has a long history of false confessions. a chicago police board found former commander jon burge guilty of physically abusing suspects, from the use of electric shock to putting a gun

to a suspect's head. so far, more than 85 convictions have been overturned in illinois since 1989, many as a result of police misconduct. >> peter neufeld: quite simply, what cooperstown is to baseball, chicago is to false confessions. it is the hall of fame. >> pitts: peter neufeld was one of the defense attorneys representing these men. he is the co-founder of the innocence project, an organization that has helped exonerate 300 wrongfully convicted men nationwide with the use of dna testing. >> neufeld: there are more juvenile false confessions in chicago than any place in the united states. what's happening? it's not because the kids are different that makes them more vulnerable to confessing. it's because the way the police keep pounding and pounding and pounding away in those interrogation rooms. you get innocent kids to confess to crimes they didn't commit. >> pitts: cook county states attorney anita alvarez disagrees. responding to public pressure, she set up a new unit within her office to re-examine questionable prosecutions.

but she defends the actions of the police in these two cases. >> anita alvarez: we have not uncovered any evidence of any misconduct by the police officers or the state's attorneys that took the statements in these cases. >> pitts: alvarez still believes the confession terrill swift gave in the nina glover case, despite the fact there was no d.n.a. evidence linking him or the others to the crime. did you find any of the boys' d.n.a. on the victim? >> alvarez: no, we didn't. >> pitts: did you find any of their d.n.a. in the basement of the house? >> alvarez: no. >> pitts: how do you explain that the boys would say they raped a woman and there not be any d.n.a. evidence? doesn't that strike you as odd? >> alvarez: well, we would love to have d.n.a. on everything and every... and every piece of evidence that we have in every crime. but it doesn't necessarily occur. >> pitts: last year, the innocence project retested the one d.n.a. sample that was recovered inside the victim, nina glover. it was submitted to the national d.n.a. database, and a match was

made to johnny douglas, a serial rapist and convicted killer who is now deceased. but the new discovery did not change anita alvarez's mind. you find out years later that, in fact, the d.n.a. found inside the victim's body belonged to johnny douglas. and johnny douglas is a convicted serial rapist and murderer. that doesn't tell you that he most likely is the person who killed this woman? >> alvarez: no, it doesn't. is he a bad guy? absolutely, he is. absolutely. but can we prove, just by someone's bad background, that they committed this particular crime? it takes much more than that. >> saunders: for her to just say d.n.a. is not everything-- well, what else do you have if d.n.a. don't matter? >> swift: this was a rape and a murder. how can you say d.n.a. is nothing? >> pitts: why would a confession trump d.n.a. evidence? >> saul kassin: because confessions are incredibly compelling. nobody can understand how they would ever be goaded into confessing to something they didn't do.

>> pitts: saul kassin is a psychology professor at john jay college of criminal justice, and has studied police interrogation practices and false confessions for 27 years. d.n.a. is supposed to solve our problems. it's supposed to identify the perpetrator and absolve the innocent. here you have cases where they absolve the innocent, but we don't believe them because the innocent have confessed. and so the d.n.a. doesn't matter anymore. >> pitts: in the case of robert taylor, jonathan barr, and james harden, d.n.a. found inside the 14-year-old victim, catteresa mathews, was also retested, and a match was made to willie randolph, a 34-year-old convicted rapist with 39 arrests. peter neufeld says prosecutors rejected the dna evidence, and instead came up with an unusual theory to explain it all away. >> neufeld: they suggest perhaps after the kids killed her, this man wandered by and committed an act of necrophilia. >> pitts: necrophilia, a lot of our viewers won't know what that means. >> neufeld: having sex with a dead person. >> alvarez: it's possible. we have seen cases like that.

>> pitts: possible? >> alvarez: it is. we've seen it in other cases. >> pitts: it's possible that this convicted rapist wandered past an open field and had sex with a 14-year-old girl who was dead? >> alvarez: well, there's all kinds of possibilities out there, and what i'm saying is that i don't know what happened. >> milan: people don't like to admit they made a mistake. but we need to do that. our job as a prosecutor isn't to win; our job is to get it right. >> pitts: former prosecutor bob milan says that prosecutors need to put the same sense of urgency into exonerations as they once did into prosecutions. >> milan: when you have physical evidence, it doesn't lie. so when you have the dna on a girl from some guy with a history of sexual attacks, that pretty much tells you where you're going. >> pitts: not the people who gave the confessions? >> milan: no. >> pitts: by now, ten defense attorneys were focusing on the new dna. working with them was a third- year northwestern law school student named katie marie zouhary. she was assigned to re-examine the original confessions, and

her research helped change the case. >> katie marie zouhary: i think when you look at a confession on a piece of paper, a court- reported confession, a handwritten confession, it seems like all the pieces are in place. but what you don't see is the 17-year-old in the room by himself with the police officers; what you don't see is that confession next to the other confessions so you're able to see that these things don't match up. >> pitts: zouhary discovered the boys confessions contained different accounts of the crimes, from the chronology to their own nicknames. >> zouhary: they get the framework right but they don't get the details right. and if any two of them had gotten the details right, that would be one thing, but when you look at each of these confession, line by line, in the way that we did, it's pretty glaring that there is no cohesive story here. >> pitts: last year, based on the new d.n.a. evidence and katie marie's work, the courts vacated the convictions and

granted all of them certificates of innocence, which restored their full rights as u.s. citizens. as for anita alvarez, she's still not convinced terrill swift and his codefendants are innocent. >> alvarez: i don't know whether he committed the crime or not. there are still unanswered questions in both of these cases that i couldn't sit here today and tell you that they are all guilty or they are all innocent. >> pitts: what would you say to her if you could? >> swift: i was wrongfully incarcerated for 15 years and you're still fighting my innocence, not only mine but my co-defendants. what else needs to be done? >> pitts: during our interview, terrill's mother, who was in the room at the time, became emotional. i could hear you crying over there. why are you still shedding tears? >> mrs. swift: that was hard, actually have your child taken away from you and he was innocent. and i knew this from the beginning. but what could i do? not to be able to get my child, my baby, my firstborn-- that was hard and it still is. we came through it with the grace of god.

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it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account. >> stahl: not since the dinosaurs disappeared have animals been going extinct as fast as they are now. entire species vanish every year. and while our hearts are moved by the plight of the biggest--

whales or elephants; the fiercest-- tigers, even sharks; and certainly the cutest, like pandas, what about the slowest? the turtle, and its land-loving cousin the tortoise, have been plodding along, slow and steady, for more than 200 million years. but their hard shells are little protection from human predators and a booming illegal animal trade. it may be too late to save many of them, but they have found an unlikely protector in a man named eric goode. some of new york city's hottest hotels, restaurants, and bars are owned by eric goode. >> eric goode: hello. i need to say hello to people i haven't said hello to. hi. >> stahl: that's made him rich and comfortable with the glitterati and fashionistas. but behind the scenes, he caters to a far less glamorous clientele-- endangered turtles

and tortoises. how did the whole interest, if not obsession, with turtles and tortoises begin? >> goode: as a child at six, >> stahl: at six? >> goode: i was given a small herman's tortoise, and that created a budding interest in the natural world, and in reptiles and snakes and lizards, and in my hard-shelled friends that i just fell in love with. and so it was a progression. >> stahl: it's an obsession that takes him as far from the glitz of the new york scene as imaginable. he wades through swamps, turns over rocks, wrangles exotic snakes and other reptiles, as he searches for his first love. >> goode: what a beautiful tortoise. this is our first psammobates tentorius trimeni. >> stahl: turtles and tortoises trace back before the dinosaurs. but now, today, about half of the over 300 species are headed toward extinction, largely because of habitat loss and an insatiable market for them, particularly in asia, as food,

medicine, rare collectors items, and pets. how big a business is the turtle-tortoise trade? >> goode: china alone is probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars. this trade flourishes because the payoff is huge and the chance of getting prosecuted and incarcerated are very low. >> stahl: if you're going to be in something illicit, this is the safest or one of the safest. >> goode: and that's a tragedy. >> stahl: eric goode is spending a million dollars a year of his own money to fight the trade in places like madagascar, an island off the coast of africa, that's vastly undeveloped. >> goode: people are so poor, some of these villages make less than a dollar a day, or it's basically subsistence living. and there just simply isn't the political will of the country to really enforce, you know, what's going on with their natural heritage, whether it's tortoises or other wildlife. >> stahl: fly over madagascar and you can see why conservationists say it's

bleeding to death-- rivers run red with soil erosion from logging and slash-and-burn agriculture that have wiped out animal habitats and 90% of the country's forests. and yet, because of its isolation, madagascar is a paradise of plants and animals found nowhere else, like the wide-eyed lemurs, chameleons that sparkle with color, geckos that hide in plain sight, more than 200 kinds of frogs, and five species of rare turtles and tortoises. eric was taking us on a trek to find the fastest-disappearing animal in madagascar, the plowshare tortoise, whose shrinking habitat is so deep in the wilderness, it's only accessible by boat. >> goode: this tortoise is one of the world's most endangered animals. it is the world's most endangered tortoise. and it has an incredibly high price on its head. asian countries love gold and

this is a gold tortoise. and so literally, these are like gold bricks that one can pick up and sell. >> stahl: we were following the path the poachers take, landing on a deserted beach, and off we went on a long hike. we walked through scrub brush in blazing heat for almost an hour. >> goode: if the sun gets too high up, they just disappear. >> stahl: the once plentiful plowshare population here, he says, could be down to as few as 300 adults. >> goode: and this is where the guards are based. >> stahl: goode has helped hire around 40 locals to go out and find the tortoises before the poachers do. >> angelo: we have to be on a team of many people. >> goode: different lines, 30 feet apart. >> angelo: yeah. >> goode: all right, let's go. >> stahl: we lined up the way police do when they search for a missing person, and by midday, with a lot of help, we got lucky. >> angelo: they found one!

>> stahl: oh, look at that. >> goode: wow! >> stahl: how did you ever find it? >> goode: wow. oh, it's a beautiful female, so this is a just a perfect, perfect female. this tortoise is a crown jewel. this is a beautiful animal. >> stahl: look at her. >> goode: and you see this, this incredible domed shell that's unique with this tortoise. nothing has... no turtle has this shell, like an army helmet. this is a very, very valuable tortoise. >> stahl: based on his own research, goode says a tortoise like this could sell for $60,000 in asia. to try and stop the trafficking, he and his colleagues have begun doing the unthinkable. it's a drill. oh, my god. >> goode: yeah. he has to be very careful not to hit the bone because then we'll draw blood. so he's going just that very carefully 16th of an inch into the shell. >> stahl: they want to leave an

indelible gash, a scar, that makes the tortoises undesirable to collectors. i have to tell you-- watching angelo do this, it's painful. it is painful to watch. >> goode: yeah. no, it's very hard. but i think we're at a point where we're down to so few animals, there's so few of these tortoises left, that we have to really take extreme measures. >> stahl: scarring the shells of these animals, defacing them, etching-- is that working? can you tell yet? >> goode: it is too soon to know if that's working. it breaks your heart to have to do that to this beautiful, beautiful shell. i mean, you can compare it maybe to chain-sawing off a rhinoceros' horn to save a rhino. i mean, how horrible is that? >> stahl: to show us what he's up against, eric took us to a market in a small city called mahajunga, where we saw, with our hidden camera, shells of endangered tortoises out in the open on display for sale. and soon, we were being offered live tortoises. so what is this? tortoise from southernider madagascar. this is critically endangered.

and the chinese sometimes just puncture the shell just to eat the liver out of this tortoise. >> stahl: one of the vendors showed up with something in a plastic bag. what is it? >> goode: wow. >> stahl: it was a radiated tortoise, on the endangered species list. asking price? just $400. we were even offered a plowshare tortoise, if we paid up front and waited several days. but that would've meant breaking madagascar and international laws against smuggling an endangered animal. how hard was it for you to not take that tortoise and save its life? if you leave it behind, who knows where it's going to end up. >> goode: it's incredibly frustrating. this animal is from such a tiny geography. you'd think you could wall it in and protect it. >> stahl: there is one place in madagascar that is trying to wall them in and protect them behind locks and razor wire-- this national park deep in a forest.

are these automatic rifles? >> richard lewis: they certainly are, yep. >> stahl: richard lewis is with the british conservation group, durrell, which runs this refuge and breeding center. >> lewis: be careful of the youngsters here. >> stahl: they're all over the place. >> lewis: yeah, just be careful. >> stahl: oh, here's some. >> lewis: watch where you step and then come on over. >> stahl: oh, my word. >> lewis: these are all adult males. >> stahl: look at them. do you know how old they are? >> lewis: this could be 50 years old, 100 years old, 150, 200 years old. >> goode: i mean, this is the longest-lived animal on the planet. >> stahl: their longevity is one of the reasons they're so valuable. asian collectors believe owning one confers long life on them. the black market trade is now so lucrative that crime syndicates are involved. the center was robbed in the late 1990s in what was called one of the heists of the century. so people actually broke into this compound, the breeding center with all the security, and stole... >> lewis: 75 youngsters and two adults. they stole... at that moment in time, it was half of our... half of the youngsters we'd ever bred.

>> stahl: since then, with the help of eric goode, the population of plowshares here has rebounded. >> lewis: this is the female enclosure. >> goode: these girls are responsible for producing 300 offspring, 300 animals that you are looking at in this entire enclosure. >> stahl: ve few people have ever seen them actually produce offspring, even here. but as we were just about to leave, one of the females wandered off, and to everyone's surprise, began to dig a nest for laying eggs. richard, have you ever seen this before? >> lewis: no. >> stahl: you have never seen it? >> lewis: me, personally, no. it's the luck of the draw, as it were. >> stahl: being a tortoise, the work was very slow and very plodding. >> goode: it's remarkable. you think those legs are just these stubby elephantine feet, but they're very good at cupping the soil and digging this incredible little hole. >> stahl: yeah, and she could be what, 60, 70 years old? >> goode: yeah, 100 years old. >> stahl: it took her almost an

hour, and then! ( gasps ) >> goode: oh! there's the egg. >> stahl: oh, my god. >> goode: oh, my god. >> stahl: is she going to do another one? >> goode: yup, yup! there it goes, there it goes. number two. this is what you work for. and even more so when the little tortoise, when the hatchling comes out, it is... you feel like you've broken a secret code. >> stahl: goode wants to emulate this kind of success back in the united states, with not just plowshares but dozens of other species. he has his own breeding center in the mountains outside of los angeles that he began with 150 turtles and tortoises given to him for safekeeping by the bronx zoo. >> goode: they were trucked across the united states, and they were the first guests in my tortoise hotel. >> stahl: each species is pampered like a guest at one of goode's hotels, with fresh-cut flowers, salad greens, and a tortoise smoothie blended with

organic milk. >> goode: each species needs a different ecosystem. like, this tortoise, for example, is from burma, and this is biologically extinct in the wild. and these guys need to be kept warm and very high humidity. >> stahl: he now has 680 animals from 30 endangered species... >> goode: this is a turtle from india and bangladesh, maybe a little bit into pakistan. >> stahl: ...and these turtles that, elsewhere, would be on the menu. >> goode: it's called the golden coin turtle, probably one of the top 25 most endangered turtles in the world. >> stahl: and young galapagos tortoises that'll grow to 400 pounds. >> goode: these were bred at a zoo in texas and they've been raised here. >> stahl: don't come for my toes. but eric goode says he doesn't want any of his guests to stay too long. >> goode: ideally, we'd like to send these animals back to the wild. >> stahl: why would you send them back? there's no protection for them back in the wild.

>> goode: it may be too soon to send a lot of them back. >> stahl: and can you? i mean, let's be realistic. >> goode: i don't know yet, but i think it's important to show that we're not just bringing animals into captivity and keeping them there forever. >> stahl: for now, he's fulfilling his dream by protecting 11 plowshares and trying to breed more. last year, he hatched 250 other tortoises and turtles. eric goode is like noah, building a safe haven for, in some cases, the last of these animals on earth. >> hell lee, everyone. welcome to the cbs sports update presented by e.trade. i'm james brown in new york. an emotional win for the cowboys. the giants lead the saints. rg3 suffers a knee injury in the redskins overtime win against the ravens. baltimore lose no, sir ground in the a.f.c. north as cincinnati and pittsburgh lose. the falcons drop their second of the season. the bears have lost four of their last five. the colts are 9-4, the nine,

maybe tape their lead in the n.f.c. west. seattle blows out arizona. for more sports news and seattle blows out arizona. for more sports news and information go, to cbssports.com.

>> pelley: "les miserables," among the greatest novels of the 19th century, became one of the most successful broadway musicals of the 20th century. and this month, hollywood gambles that this epic story has the power to revive the musical form on the screen. director tom hooper has spent $61 million recreating a paris rebellion and filling scenes with actors including russell crowe, anne hathaway and hugh jackman.

no actor combines the talents of a broadway song-and-dance man with the film presence of an action hero the way that jackman does. he won stardom playing a murderous mutant on film, and then won a tony playing a gay entertainer on stage. when we met him in his native australia, the 44-year-old actor told us that everything he has done in a wide-ranging career has led him to this one moment. in "les miserables," jackman plays one of the most heroic characters in literature, jean valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread for his sister's starving family, an angry brute of a man whose sentence extends to 19 years because of his hunger to escape. his nemesis is inspector javert, played by russell crowe.

>> ♪ look down, look down don't look him in the eye ♪ look down, look down you're here until you die... ♪ >> hugh jackman: any movie musical is like mount everest. i think it's the most difficult form ever to pull off in film. when it works, it's spectacular; when it doesn't, it stinks to high heaven. >> pelley: this film is either going to be a hit or it's going to be a massive bust. >> jackman: yup. >> pelley: why did you take the risk on it? >> jackman: jean valjean is the holy grail for me. it's... i know that it demands everything from me, as a singer, as an actor to pull it off. it's the role of a lifetime. >> pelley: the story, written by victor hugo in 1862, follows valjean's redemption against the backdrop of a failed revolt against the monarchy. >> jackman: ♪ he is young, he's afraid... >> pelley: the film is unique in the way that the actors sang

their roles. usually in musicals, they record songs in a sound studio and then lip sync when the camera rolls. but in "les miz," they sang in the moment. >> jackman: ♪ bring him home, bring him home, bring him home... ♪ we would wear a little ear piece where someone off the set there was playing music. and we would hear the live piano and we would just sing. >> pelley: what do you get from that? >> jackman: you get an emotional truth. for example, there's one song, and it's, literally, written like this. ♪ "what have i done, sweet jesus? what have i done? ♪ become a thief in the night, become a dog on the run. ♪ have i fallen so far and is the hour so late that nothing remains but the cry of my hate?" that's how it's written. now, i could, "what have i done, sweet jesus? what have i done?

become a thief in the night..." ♪ become a dog on the run. have i fallen so far and is the hour so late that nothing remains but the cry of my hate... i could mix it up, i could take a pause. if i was emotional, i could be emotional. ♪ i am reaching, but i fall and the night is closing in ♪ as i stare into the void to the whirlpool of my sin i'll escape now from that world from the world of jean valjean. ♪ jean valjean is nothing now another story must begin! >> pelley: the story of hugh jackman must begin in australia.

his parents sailed from england into sydney harbor in the 1960s. hugh was the youngest of five, born to an accountant and a housewife. they were all together, until one morning when he was eight, and his mom did something that would shape his life. >> jackman: i can remember the morning she left. it's weird the things you pick up. i remember her being in... a towel around her head and saying good-bye. must have been the way she said good-bye as i went off to school. when i came back, there was no one there, in the house. and the next day was a telegram from england. mum was there, and then that was it. >> pelley: she had left the family? >> jackman: yeah. i don't think she thought for a second it would be forever when she went. i think she thought it was, "i just need to get away and i'll come back." dad used to pray every night that mum would come back. >> pelley: did you ever worry that the family would just come apart, that your dad would go, too? >> jackman: never, in a million years, could i imagine... my father is a rock. my father is my rock.

it's where i learned everything about loyalty, dependability, about being there day-in, day- out, no matter what. >> pelley: jackman would see his mother about once a year. alone, chris jackman raised three boys and two girls. he scraped together private school tuition. and the boys went to knox grammar school, the conservative alma mater of australian c.e.o.s and prime ministers. hugh wanted us to see the place that set him on his course. >> jackman: this is the headmaster... or was the headmaster's office. this is the no cursing area, just so you know. >> pelley: you didn't spend any time in the headmaster's office, did you? >> jackman: i'll tell you a story-- i was the captain of the school. i don't know if you have that kind of title, so... >> pelley: it's like class president. >> jackman: right, so the headmaster brought me in. "i want you to be class president." and i was like, "wow, fantastic, great." and i went back to class, was mucking around in class. and the teacher said, "go straight to the headmaster's

office." i was like, "this is going to be really awkward," because... >> pelley: i just came from there. >> jackman: literally, an hour before, he just made me class president. so i knocked on the door and he says, "hugh?" and i said, "yes, headmaster, i've just been thinking a little bit about next year." and we had a bit of a chat, it was perfect. >> pelley: you didn't tell him why you'd been sent back. >> jackman: no, no, i... i thought he might rescind the offer. >> pelley: that bit of acting got him out of a jam, but it was in here that he first felt a stage beneath his feet and applause in the air. >> jackman: up here was probably the highlight of my childhood. >> pelley: up on the stage? >> jackman: yeah. oh, my gosh. >> pelley: look at you. is that you? >> jackman: that is me. >> pelley: do you remember this night? >> jackman: i absolutely remember every bit of it. >> pelley: look at this. i mean, you're... you're into it. you're loving this. >> jackman: i was so happy and felt so at home. and i just loved it. >> pelley: it was a love that drew him off the traditional path. with $3,500 he inherited from his grandmother, he went to acting school and was hired in his first audition after graduation.

>> jackman: my very first job. it was a tv series called "correlli," and it was lust between the bars. >> pelley: lust for leading lady deborra lee furness, to whom he proposed four months into the job. >> jackman: i just had an absolute certainty that she was the person i was going to be with for the rest of my life. even when deb tried to break up with me, which she did, i said, "don't worry, i get it. i'm your worst nightmare, a young actor in his first job. but don't worry, we're going to be together. this is it." >> pelley: and it was. >> jackman: we're going on a date night tonight. >> pelley: married 16 years, they've adopted a boy and a girl who are now 12 and seven. one of the things that he says is "happy wife, happy life." >> deborra lee furness: see how smart he is? good looking and smart. he's very good at making me a happy wife. >> pelley: and the key to happiness? jackman turns down the jobs that would separate them. >> furness: we never have more than two weeks apart. >> pelley: is that a family rule, two weeks is the max?

a lot of families these days are separated by much more than that. >> furness: we choose not to. we don't like it. and then you make the choice, why are you doing the job? if you're away from your family, what's the point? >> jackman: yes, my man. >> pelley: but he was away this year for that "role of a lifetime" in "les miz." his family lives in new york, but he was shooting in britain. the memory of that absence was fresh when we asked him about his father's experience. what advice does he give you today? >> jackman: it's always about the family. ah... ah... it's all... sorry, mate. it's always, "how's deb?" it's not about work.

and i think that's him living with, probably, some of his regrets and feelings of maybe he... you know, at the wrong time, put too much into his career. and he doesn't want me to make that mistake. and so, in his gentle way, he always reminds me this is the most important thing. >> pelley: beautiful house, but not your house. >> jackman: no. >> furness: we're always living in someone else's house. >> pelley: jackman wasn't making the same mistake again when we met him in sydney. he was spending six months here shooting an action film, so he moved the family, too. he was returning, for the fifth time, to the character wolverine from the "x-men" comic books. jackman told us that the only time he didn't listen to his wife was when she urged him to refuse the role. these films made him wealthy, and he emerged an international star. it's a physical part for which

jackman sculpts both beard and body, and he invited us to his two-a-day workouts. >> jackman: that didn't feel easy this morning. >> pelley: impressive. impressive. >> jackman: i always say, when i lift something heavy, i remember that is wolverine. the little bit to where you're going to want to drop it and then you go, "no way," that little bit is wolverine. >> pelley: you change bodies the way other actors change costumes. >> jackman: well, this is your tool as much as your voice, as much as your emotions, and so i've always taken that very seriously. and i love playing wolverine. it's a great character, but i want it to be better than the last time. i want to be physically in better shape. otherwise, there's no point doing it. >> pelley: but, look, you're a successful guy. you don't have anything to prove to anyone. you have this little voice in your head telling you to do more, do better? >> jackman: if i didn't have that, i wouldn't be sitting here opposite you. at the same time, for the sake

of people around me, it'd be nice to be able to, "whew," you know, put it down for a while. >> pelley: it might also be nice for the sake of people around him if he didn't take the risks that he seems to relish. >> jackman: ♪ whoa, whoa. when my baby... >> pelley: he won one of the first of his two tonys on broadway playing peter allen, the gay australian songwriter. did you think for a minute, "man, this could be career limiting? i don't know if i want to take this chance?" >> jackman: never thought it for a second. what sexuality you are is not the most interesting thing about you; it's the kind of person you are. and that role just had... first of all, it was naughty. ( cheers and applause ) how are we doing downstairs? ( cheers and applause ) there's a few nervous people in the front row, all of a sudden. i would never give myself permission to do the things i did as peter allen. and his sexuality, for me, is another costume. it's a personality trait, it's not who you really are.

however, when i was doing peter allen, there's a scene where i kiss my boyfriend, who's dying of aids. and i go in for the kiss, and i heard this-- "don't do it, wolverine." ( laughter ) >> pelley: from the audience? >> jackman: from the audience. obviously, some... some kid's going, "yeah, let's go and see wolverine in thashow, mum. let's go and see it." he's like, "what?" as i come out with my maracas and pineapple shirt, you know? ♪ who am i? i'm jean valjean. >> pelley: and jean valjean may be another surprise for an audience that can never be sure what it will see when the camera rolls or the curtain rises on the characters of hugh jackman. >> jackman: ♪ who am i? 2-4-6-0-1! ♪ >> go to 60minutesovertime.com

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>> stahl: now, an update on our story from a year ago called "the pledge," a look at the power wielded by lobbyist and anti-tax crusader grover norquist. nearly every republican in congress has signed the promise that they will never, under any circumstances, vote to raise taxes on anyone. here's what norquist, the pledge's originator and chief enforcer, told steve kroft. >> grover norquist: republicans who vote for a tax increase are rat heads in a coke bottle. they damage the brand for everyone else. >> stahl: now, as the country approaches the fiscal cliff, a handful of republicans have defied norquist and say they'll consider raising new revues, and 12ewly elected republicans in congress have refused to take the pledge at all. i'm lesley stahl. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." captioning funded by cbs and ford-- built for the road ahead.

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